9/8: A new work for string sextet, electric bass, and 2 amplified percussionists by Nico Muhly serenades Isaac Mizrahi’s Spring 2009 Collection.

You can watch the whole show on Isaac’s site here.

Although the music used for runway shows is very carefully considered, I’m not sure it is standard practice to bring live performers into the mix. Nevertheless, Isaac Mizrahi showed guts and great taste when he commissioned a new piece from Nico Muhly for his 2009 spring collection show, held Monday at the Hammerstein Ballroom. In what was possibly the most fun Monday morning ever, we performed it live at the show with Nico conducting. Nadia hired a great group, including our favorite exceptionally tall percussionist from South Dakota, whom we call “Bigcountry.”

The show is titled “Swarm,” and the majority of our percussion efforts centered on creating miniature, ticky, insecty sounds directly into microphones turned way up. Nico’s use of tiny amplified percussion goes all the way back to his song cycle for The Elements of Style, during which we discovered The World’s Smallest Maraca, and then later we got especially creative on a live show and album, where I amplified frying eggs and sizzling butter.

For “Swarm,”, we made a swarm of cicadas (4:15) created with indian ankle bells and belly dancer jingles, as well as a little bit of rainforest out of Indonesian Angklung (6:00). I love those angklung and relish any opportunity to show the world… they are actually a diatonically tuned set of two octaves on a handmade bamboo rack.

Ankle bells, belly dancer jingles

Angklung

We used knitting needles on just about everything that needed to be struck, including wooden agogo bells (2:15), tin cans (11:45), and my magic froggy guiro (2:50), although in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that when I asked for the mics to be hot, I didn’t realize just how hot they could make them… what sounded like a cricket on our side of the house was more like a 400 pound mutant bullfrog under the speakers by the runway. Those poor girls in their crazy shoes, I’m glad we didn’t make anyone trip!

Froggy Guiro